All Blog Posts

The days are just flying by here at Roger Williams University School of Law. Already we are firmly in our second month back, and already I am starting to feel a wee bit overwhelmed. It was supposed to get easier, folks. We have a semester under our belts. It was supposed to be old hat by now. I was supposed to have all the answers and be exceedingly, obnoxiously, almost irrationally intelligent.
That didn’t happen. I was sitting in class today, trying to wrap my mind around supplemental jurisdiction, and I realized quite abruptly that I was not that smart, and that Civil Procedure would in...

I have several things I want to share with you in this post, so we’re going to go with my ever-popular list format:
1. Grades are all in, at least for the 1Ls. Some were good, some were bad, all were nerve-wracking. I did pretty well for the amount of work and time I put into things, so I’m pretty happy. I’m not going to talk about grades anymore though, because I think we have all heard enough at this point. Suffice it to say to people looking to come to law school: you will get grades. They will be a reflection of how much time you put into the enterprise + innate ability + dumb luck + how...

You will learn in school that a person who represents themselves has a fool for a client. While this may, and does, hold true in the courtroom or across the boardroom table, it does not hold true in the classroom or in the quiet reflective moments right before you go to sleep when your darkest fears come a-callin’. It is very easy in law school to get sucked into the vortex of other people’s advice, opinions, successes and failures. There is a constant barrage of new opportunities and challenges (professional and personal), and just walking through the cafeteria on your way outside you’ll...

As I sit here in Miami Beach, typing with one hand and a Mojito in another, I find it hard to believe I just finished my first semester of law school. The snow covered harbor of Bristol, RI seems so very far away, and as well it should. I needed this break; we all needed this break. This has definitely been the most rigorous semester of my life, but also one of the happiest. I’ve made great new friends, had countless interesting conversations, and more than my fair share of fun (some other 1L is out there going “where is my share of fun? Ms. Furst must have taken it...!"). Even still, and to...

They don’t tell you this, but studying hurts. It seems unreasonable, that sitting in a chair staring at a book, or a computer for 16 hours a day could leave you sore and achy, but it does. My back hurts, my neck hurts, my face hurts. I’ve been grinding my teeth so hard I think I chipped one, and my eyesight has definitely worsened in the past few weeks. I find it difficult to sit up straight, so accustomed is my body to hunching over some writing/ reading device. I have begun to forget what day it is. I cannot wait for finals to be over. Tomorrow we have Civ Pro, which for me has been like...

If I had to sum up the necessary traits for successful exam prep in one word, it would be “stamina”. 4 exams spread out over 3 weeks doesn’t sound hard, but it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It is in this time that you are committing everything to memory, practicing your exam answers, updating (or, in some cases, creating) your outline, and generally trying to cram into your brain everything you’ve learned in the last four months, to be regurgitated back into a 3 hour exam. We had our first exam for Criminal Law on Thursday, and it was exhausting. I was supposed to be typing, but the program...

So, the law is a judging profession. You are constantly balancing pros and cons, thinking about both sides of an issue, and utlimately deciding what the strongest argument is. This starts to bleed into your everyday life, in seemingly insignifigant ways at first, and then begins to rear it’s ugly head in ways that are less easy to ignore. For instance, I am currently studying for finals at a local establishment and while everyone around me is perfectly lovely, I am beginning to hear logical fallacies in what they are saying, and it’s killing me. I want to roll my eyes at a rate of about once...

Ahem.
Exams are approaching, and it ain’t pretty, folks. We just got back from 5 days off for Thanksgiving, and returned to the last week of class and the impending exams. We’ve had memos and midterms and socratic method attacks, but still, the big Fs are looming (F is for Final, not, I hope, any of my grades). There is a buzz about the school, one that can only be described as high energy fear. Remember in college when professors spent the last couple of weeks in review mode, helping you prepare for their finals? Yeah, that doesn’t happen in law school. I have new assignments though...

Ok, I have several things I want to cover in this blog post:
1. Many of you will be living on a combination of scholarships and loans in law school, which means somewhere around, oh say November 6th, you will realize that you have no money. It is important at that point not to panic. There are several things working in your favor: a) You live in a small town where things are relatively cheap. Utilities are pretty reasonable, you have to travel into Providence to get to a mall, and beer is $1-$4 depending on happy hour and location. b) You have no time with which to spend your no-money, being...

Some days at Roger Williams University School of Law feel a little bit like a return to high school. We have a cafeteria, there are sections, and everyone knows everyone, meaning teachers and your peers. I will be honest, if you want to be anonymous and feel like a number, then RWU is not the school for you. For the most part it is pretty funny, the comparisons with high school, mostly because we are all pretty smart and somewhat geeky in our own little ways, and we’re all over the age of majority. So as easy as it would be to fall into the habit of caring about popularity and who is dating...